Napoleon, art, and rambles.
I've found that if I don't post right away after interesting things, I either never post or simply have long, 80% complete recollections that I never actually finish.
They had another Obie alum event recently at the Dahesh Museum, a fairly recent museum. (Amusing sidetrack: The original collection was from one Dr. Dahesh, the penname of a Lebanese academic who collected Western art with the goal of opening a museum... in Beirut. Then 1975 happened, and for some inexplicable reason, he moved his collection to the United States of Freedomerica And Not Being on Fire.) The permanent collection of the museum concentrated on academic art, that forgotten side-track of painting that focused on realism, painting classical figures and Greek gods, proto-Orientalist fantasy type stuff, politician's portraits, etc. It got sidetracked by splitoffs in the 1850s and later like realism (let's show boring stuff like stonecutters to prove how art can tackle the common man) and impressionism (which is actually awesome).
The rotating exhibit was "Napoleon on the Nile," basically exhibiting all this cool stuff that Napoleon found in Egypt. Apparently Napoleon took along 150-200 "savants," scholars who meticulously detailed the natural life, artifacts, and history of the place. Part of the beginning of the whole Egyptology stuff, since they looked at mummies, found the Rosetta Stone, and so on. The British, who sank Napoleon's battleship and whipped the French army, ended up scooping up most of the cool stuff afterward (which is why a lot of it is in the British Museum, like the Rosetta Stone), but the French scholars got to keep their notes, so they ended up publishing a gi-normous multivolume book creatively called "The Description of Egypt" afterward from the vast pile o' research (Amusing sidenote 2: The first edition, of which they had a copy, is dedicated to L'Empereur Napoleon le Grand. For some odd reason, the second edition is simply dedicated to le roi. Heh.). This included an actual mummy finger on display- at least I think. Lots of the art/pictures were taken from the Description.
Somehow, leading an entire French army to defeat at the British and losing a French fleet was enough to get Napoleon made Emperor upon return. Some of the artwork was Napoleon's PR team; Karl Rove should take some lessons. It had things like Paladin Napoleon doing his laying-on-of-hands on plague victims at Jaffa to magically heal the brave warriors of France (which is true, to a degree, he ordered them poisoned so as to not fall to the enemy and fewer mouths to feed). In fairness, he did whip the Mameluke/Ottomans who held the area upon arrival, but a modern 19th century army taking down the Mamelukes is not exactly a stunning achievement, and more to the point, the British were the real enemy. (Another interesting footnote: Another Obie brought up that Napoleon intended to establish a Jewish state in Israel. There's apparently some credibility to this; he at least drew up a proclamation, and had fairly Jewish-friendly policies at other times in his reign. Still, could have been just another PR stunt.)
On the downside, I had perhaps the most expensive pita bread ever afterward. See, it was 10 dollars for the tour (fine) or 35 bucks for the tour + reception. This was at the Dahesh's "Cafe Opaline." While I'm not in any way a food gourmet, this was a nice Midtown fancy-shmancy museum near Central Park and it's only money. Why not? Don't get a chance to eat like the rich & famous all the time.
...except that apparently 25 bucks only buys you pita bread and some spreads. Oh, wait, there was coca-cola & wine too. Neither of which I drink. I can only say that that better have been freakin' spectacular wine, because while I would have gotten ripped off no matter what, it seems like everyone got ripped off anyway. Where were the little sandwiches? The cheese cubes? The fruit plate? Some vague form of desserty-something? This was the cheapest expensive reception ever. Oh, well.
---
On a more political note, I find it amusing that in the runup to the election, the media kept mentioning how the Democrats had no plan, no agenda of their own, and whose only goal was to investigate the last 6 years and hold embarrassing hearings. But now that they've gotten elected, we actually find out what they're going to do, and for the most part, it actually sounds pretty decent. Notably, they're going to reintroduce pay-as-you-go legislation on budgeting and clamp down on earmarks. I suppose it remains to be seen if they simply leave lots of exceptions for Democratic pork, but it's reason to hope (and if some Democratic pork, and a lot of Republican pork, gets cut, that's okay by me). The refrain against Democrats in the 80's was that they were "tax & spenders;" that at least seems better than the recent Republican strategy of "go into debt & spend." I'm not liking the whole "let's bully drug companies" angle and if the Dems get too protectionist, I will be annoyed, but that remains to be seen.
Also, this may not be news for some (it started 4 months ago, though it's still being updated now- ep. 14 was uploaded just recently), but in the "cool links" category... An off-hand reference in the comments of tenken's journal actually (I think?), led me to search and find Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged series. I actually watched an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh out of dark curiosity back in Southern NJ after college, and oh, it was wretched. The creator of this (who I'm guessing is an anguished fan of the card game?) has somehow managed to actually make it incredibly funny, via chopping things down to 5 minutes and redubbing in new mercilessly self-mocking dialogue. And no, you don't need to be a card game nerd to get this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w71V2E3VC5s
They had another Obie alum event recently at the Dahesh Museum, a fairly recent museum. (Amusing sidetrack: The original collection was from one Dr. Dahesh, the penname of a Lebanese academic who collected Western art with the goal of opening a museum... in Beirut. Then 1975 happened, and for some inexplicable reason, he moved his collection to the United States of Freedomerica And Not Being on Fire.) The permanent collection of the museum concentrated on academic art, that forgotten side-track of painting that focused on realism, painting classical figures and Greek gods, proto-Orientalist fantasy type stuff, politician's portraits, etc. It got sidetracked by splitoffs in the 1850s and later like realism (let's show boring stuff like stonecutters to prove how art can tackle the common man) and impressionism (which is actually awesome).
The rotating exhibit was "Napoleon on the Nile," basically exhibiting all this cool stuff that Napoleon found in Egypt. Apparently Napoleon took along 150-200 "savants," scholars who meticulously detailed the natural life, artifacts, and history of the place. Part of the beginning of the whole Egyptology stuff, since they looked at mummies, found the Rosetta Stone, and so on. The British, who sank Napoleon's battleship and whipped the French army, ended up scooping up most of the cool stuff afterward (which is why a lot of it is in the British Museum, like the Rosetta Stone), but the French scholars got to keep their notes, so they ended up publishing a gi-normous multivolume book creatively called "The Description of Egypt" afterward from the vast pile o' research (Amusing sidenote 2: The first edition, of which they had a copy, is dedicated to L'Empereur Napoleon le Grand. For some odd reason, the second edition is simply dedicated to le roi. Heh.). This included an actual mummy finger on display- at least I think. Lots of the art/pictures were taken from the Description.
Somehow, leading an entire French army to defeat at the British and losing a French fleet was enough to get Napoleon made Emperor upon return. Some of the artwork was Napoleon's PR team; Karl Rove should take some lessons. It had things like Paladin Napoleon doing his laying-on-of-hands on plague victims at Jaffa to magically heal the brave warriors of France (which is true, to a degree, he ordered them poisoned so as to not fall to the enemy and fewer mouths to feed). In fairness, he did whip the Mameluke/Ottomans who held the area upon arrival, but a modern 19th century army taking down the Mamelukes is not exactly a stunning achievement, and more to the point, the British were the real enemy. (Another interesting footnote: Another Obie brought up that Napoleon intended to establish a Jewish state in Israel. There's apparently some credibility to this; he at least drew up a proclamation, and had fairly Jewish-friendly policies at other times in his reign. Still, could have been just another PR stunt.)
On the downside, I had perhaps the most expensive pita bread ever afterward. See, it was 10 dollars for the tour (fine) or 35 bucks for the tour + reception. This was at the Dahesh's "Cafe Opaline." While I'm not in any way a food gourmet, this was a nice Midtown fancy-shmancy museum near Central Park and it's only money. Why not? Don't get a chance to eat like the rich & famous all the time.
...except that apparently 25 bucks only buys you pita bread and some spreads. Oh, wait, there was coca-cola & wine too. Neither of which I drink. I can only say that that better have been freakin' spectacular wine, because while I would have gotten ripped off no matter what, it seems like everyone got ripped off anyway. Where were the little sandwiches? The cheese cubes? The fruit plate? Some vague form of desserty-something? This was the cheapest expensive reception ever. Oh, well.
---
On a more political note, I find it amusing that in the runup to the election, the media kept mentioning how the Democrats had no plan, no agenda of their own, and whose only goal was to investigate the last 6 years and hold embarrassing hearings. But now that they've gotten elected, we actually find out what they're going to do, and for the most part, it actually sounds pretty decent. Notably, they're going to reintroduce pay-as-you-go legislation on budgeting and clamp down on earmarks. I suppose it remains to be seen if they simply leave lots of exceptions for Democratic pork, but it's reason to hope (and if some Democratic pork, and a lot of Republican pork, gets cut, that's okay by me). The refrain against Democrats in the 80's was that they were "tax & spenders;" that at least seems better than the recent Republican strategy of "go into debt & spend." I'm not liking the whole "let's bully drug companies" angle and if the Dems get too protectionist, I will be annoyed, but that remains to be seen.
Also, this may not be news for some (it started 4 months ago, though it's still being updated now- ep. 14 was uploaded just recently), but in the "cool links" category... An off-hand reference in the comments of tenken's journal actually (I think?), led me to search and find Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged series. I actually watched an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh out of dark curiosity back in Southern NJ after college, and oh, it was wretched. The creator of this (who I'm guessing is an anguished fan of the card game?) has somehow managed to actually make it incredibly funny, via chopping things down to 5 minutes and redubbing in new mercilessly self-mocking dialogue. And no, you don't need to be a card game nerd to get this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w71V2E3VC5s